Retrieving Azure Billing Data

You can configure vCommander to retrieve Azure billing data. Retrieving billing data improves the accuracy of costing reports and Cost Analytics, because these reports include metered usage costs such as Storage and Network I/O. Billing data is retrieved immediately after you configure the billing data location. During a nightly scheduled task, the billing data is merged with the existing billing data in the VM billing records.

Azure provides daily billing reports and vCommander retrieves a maximum of 60 days' worth of billing data. vCommander can retrieve data from before the Azure account was added as a managed system. vCommander also retrieves Azure billing data for VMs that have never been managed by vCommander. For example, if an Azure account was added as a managed system 90 days ago, and you configure vCommander to retrieve billing data today, vCommander retrieves the last 60 days' worth of billing data for all Azure VMs that have existed at any point over the last 60 days. As another example, if you add an Azure account as a managed system today, and you configure vCommander to retrieve billing data today, vCommander retrieves the last 60 days' worth of billing data for all Azure VMs that have existed at any point over the last 60 days, including VMs that were never managed by vCommander.

Click Test to validate the enrollment number and check that the billing API access key is valid and hasn't expired.

Click OK.

Sixty days of billing data is retrieved immediately, and a nightly task will update future records on a daily basis.

Disabling the retrieval of Azure billing data

To disable billing data retrieval for an Azure account:

Right-click an Azure managed system in the tree and select Retrieve Billing Data.

In the Retrieve Azure Usage and Cost Data dialog, select Not Configured and click OK.

vCommander will no longer retrieve billing data for this managed system.

Troubleshooting

The following error message may show up on the Retrieve Azure Usage and Cost Data dialog after you enter your billing API access key: "Unable to access the Billing API service. The enrollment number might be incorrect, or the API access key is invalid or has expired." If your key has expired, you'll need to regenerate it. For instructions on how to generate the Billing API Access key, go to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/billing/billing-enterprise-api.

Billing data for VMs not managed by vCommander

vCommander also retrieves Azure billing data for VMs that have never been managed by vCommander, including charges for:

VMs that exist only between vCommander synchronizations with Azure, such as VMs spawned and torn down by an Auto Scaling Group

VMs that existed only before the Azure account was added as a vCommander managed system

VMs that existed only when the vCommander service was down

existing VMs, including for periods before the Azure account was added as a vCommander managed system

When a VM not managed by vCommander is discovered in the Azure billing report, the following occurs:

a cost model is applied to the VM, based on its location in the Operational or Deployed tree

Billing data for all Azure services

When billing data retrieval is configured, vCommander's cost analytics data accurately reflects the total cost you'll have to pay on your Azure bill and includes costs for services that vCommander doesn't manage. Examples of such services include but are not limited to:

data management

security center

business analytics

data services

On your Azure bill, some of the costs for services may be divided into sub-categories. These sub-categories don't show up in vCommander's cost analytics data. Only the total cost for a service is displayed.

If you have an Enterprise Agreement account, but configure the system for standard billing data retrieval, the resulting reports may show values that differ from your actual payments.

Ownership of each service will reflect the ownership policy that you set up on the managed system, region, or resource group level.

Tax and Azure support plan fees are not included in the list of services because they are charged on a monthly basis.